No Carry-on Luggage = No Reading Material!

Most likely, use my time trying to think up ways to blow up the plane....


I abhor being without reading materials.

Can I have a pencil and paper?

If so, I'd draw and write. If desperate, I might teach myself to write lefthanded again.

Grab some Tylenol PM and sleep the trip away, if it's (the trip) short enough. If not, I'd take a handkerchief and make an amusing hanky mouse (it's a clean handkerchief, you silly people) and see if I can get the flight attendant to spill stuff (my father got a waitress to spill a drink once while doing the mouse trick).

See: http://spiritsdancing.typepad.com/monkeyseemonkeydo/2005/02/the_jumping_han.html

My father learned this trick from his great-aunt, who brought it over from Austro-Hungary. I don't know who knew it before she did.

No way Osso...you might stab someone with your pencil...and paper cut them to death.

Then I'll be forced to sing, and with my talent, the flight attendents would rush over with drawing materials..

Perhaps we could see which passenger could balance the highest stack of Rx bottles?

Or do something death-defying with plastic bags.

I read that same thing last night, Noddy, and thought the same thing.

Truth is though, the last five years or so of plane travel have been exclusively with the kiddo, and reading never seems to work, anyway. Last trip (Denver --> Columbus), I spent the last half hour or so making entertainingly agonized faces every time she squeezed my hand (hard!) to try to distract her sufficiently to keep her from barfing everywhere (as she had on an earlier leg of the journey -- and I mean everywhere). My hand hurt like hell but it worked.

We bought some dramamine for the next trip. (She barfed on the way TO Denver, too.)

I usually hold off on barfing until I am out of the plane and going through customs...

(happened on a trip from Mexico to Los Angeles)

E.G., too! He'd made the mistake of telling sozlet a story about a time that he barfed shortly AFTER he got off the plane, and when I asked her why she didn't wait just a LITTLE bit longer (she barfed just as the plane was landing, five minutes would've done it), she said didn't want to do the same thing he'd done. Argh!! (I had a complete change of clothes for her in the carryon, thank goodness, but it was still extremely unpleasant.)

Which brings it back to -- no complete change of clothes because of no carryon! Ack!

I'd find it very hard to be A Patriotic American Combating Terror without clean children's outfits and something to amuse the children....

...to say nothing of a diverting novel.

It all seems a bit drastic.

Next year, I'm planning to make that 24 hour trip (again) to terrify those Europeans!

Just imagine being incarcerated for that long without reading material, or something else to distract me. Talk about kids getting sick - I'm heaps bigger, and.....

I do hope they sort it out before April!

Re: No Carry-on Luggage = No Reading Material!


Thank goodness (at least for me and passengers on my flight this week) this is only coming from England! Imagine having two young children and no carry on for a flight of 5 hours or more?! (1 hour for that matter!) I wonder what they did to entertain the little ones - must be miserable for all those involved on a flight with little ones. I am packing so much crap to entertain them - our flight is about 4 ½ hours. The other passengers should be thankful that we come supplied.

I think if we were forced to not bring anything - I would have them look at the crappy sales magazines and flight magazine in the front pocket - allow them to slowly tear it up and make a mess - they would love the chance to destroy something. Have them make faces at the passengers behind us. Play some question type games…I am thinking of a place and we get to ask questions and guess. Have them walk up and down the aisle and wave and annoy the other passengers. Get some toilet paper from the lavatory and make sculptures with it.

And that goodness that my children do not barf on flights!

Linkat--

Perhaps air travellers are more sophisticated than they were 40-odd years ago, but I found that while entertaining my children in an airplane--or in a doctor's office--that I was entertaining other passengers and the rest of the waiting room as well.

This was before the days of in-flight movies to amuse people without a lust for the printed page.

Don't forget to have the kids kick the seat in front of them.